A Moment Forever

by Cat Gardiner

  “I don’t know, but what I can tell you is that your grandfather never spoke of his brother. Not because he disliked him but because it hurt him too much to do so. Apparently, after your father’s christening, the brothers had a falling out.”

  Writing furiously in her pad, she scribbled notations that, although seemingly inconsequential at the moment, could very well be integral pieces later.

  “Do you know what their falling out was over?”

  “No. Louis was very secretive and your grandmother even more so. For a woman with such a gift of gab, she never spoke of her family or her past.”

  “I can’t argue there, it’s as though Mimi’s life began with Grandpa. I don’t ever recall her even mentioning siblings or where she grew up. Was she even from New York? For all I know there could be a whole family out there.”

  “A family of wackos most likely. If you ask me—your whole Martel lineage is screwed up. It’s a wonder you’re normal, but then you are half Johnston and my family is the pinnacle of society and normalcy.”

  Juliana laughed falsely, half acknowledging the joke but the other half—the serious half—grabbed this fortuitous opportunity to explain to her mother the damage she had inflicted on her then pre-teen daughter. “I think I can confidently proclaim that I am not normal. Is it normal at the age of twenty-four to have no “family” whatsoever and to shy away from seeking one of my own? Is it normal that because of the abandonment by my mother, I question whether I’m worthy of a family or love. Is it normal that my psychologist feels I might have an eating disorder as a result of my unrealistic guilt over said abandonment? I doubt the silence or eccentricity of the Martel family have anything to do with my fear of commitment or my fear of intimacy. If anything, I think those particular personality flaws were created because of one Johnston person in particular, someone who thinks herself the pinnacle of society and normalcy, yet her fake face, breasts, and teeth are completely abnormal.”

  Susan’s body language spoke volumes to Juliana when she folded her arms across her new breasts. “I take offense,” she scoffed.

  “Why? It’s the truth and you know it. The point is, Susan, that oftentimes secrets are held for very good reasons, not because the people holding them are strange, but because circumstances warrant it. I’m not here today to drudge up the sordid past of our relationship.”

  “But we need to discuss our relationship, darling. We need to clear the air. There should be no secrets between us. You may not accept it, but I am your family.”

  Juliana snorted at that last statement. “The word ‘family’ represents something more than shared DNA. The sole reason I am here is to unlock the mysteries of my new home, the man who once lived there, and why he left it to me. I don’t intend on exploiting the discovery of wounds and hurts in my grandfather’s brother. I intend on celebrating his life, the man he was—the love he had for a woman named Lizzy and his wartime service to this country as a pilot. Who knows, maybe I’ll submit his name to some museum or something. Maybe he has medals or a Purple Heart. Maybe he did something incredibly heroic or maybe I will find out he was just like me … a bit wounded and scarred by the events in his life. Everyone has a heartwarming story to tell—probably even you. And no, I’m not afraid that he’s still alive and may want his money back.”

  Juliana didn’t expect to defend the life or mysterious secrets of her great-uncle, but after having spent the last couple of nights in her new home—his home—she felt an almost kinship with the man she once thought wholly unconnected to her. She picked up her pen and resolutely continued her interview.

  “Did Dad ever say anything about his uncle?”

  “Julie, are you not even going to allow me the opportunity to discuss what clearly is at the core of this luncheon?”

  “No, Susan. Did you ever hear the name Lizzy spoken by anyone?”

  “Dear, you must understand that your father and I were very young when we married, and we only married because I was pregnant. It was a mistake, a foolish mistake during a passionate, drunken night in the back seat of his father’s Buick. Certainly, we were doomed from the start.”

  Again, Juliana’s eyes grew wide as her jaw fixed. Through clenched teeth, she seethed her response. “I was not a mistake, Susan.”

  Susan sighed then took a sip of her iced tea, resolved to the fact that this lunch was not going as she planned. She finally acquiesced to her daughter’s determination with a quick, false smile. “Very well, I know very little about the man. When your father was a teenager up until we married, he maintained the property around Primrose Cottage. From about the age of twelve, his father sent him on the Q subway down to Flatbush. He’d mow the lawn and rake leaves—things like that, but when he and I moved up to the East Side after our wedding and you came along shortly thereafter, well, there wasn’t much time to go back down to Brooklyn. Speaking of the East Side, have you not gone through your father’s things yet? I’m sure Gordon saved a letter or two from his uncle. Although they never met, William always made it a point to remember your father’s milestone birthdays. He even sent us a wedding gift and a christening gift for you.”

  “I haven’t been to Dad’s yet.” Juliana swallowed hard. “It’s difficult, but I know I have to pack his belongings soon, send things to St. Vincent DePaul, and eventually, I’ll put his co-op up for sale. I have no interest in it … too many memories. Strangely, I feel I can be happy at Primrose Cottage.”

  “I understand, Julie. There are too many bad memories for me, too. I was never happy up on 84th Street. It was too far from the Theatre District and Saks.”

  “Yeah, whatever. So, let’s get back to William. Do you know anything of his military service?”

  “No, but I do know that your grandfather fought in the Pacific and your grandmother was with the Red Cross. Maybe you can start there.”

  “Hmm … maybe. Not that it’ll help me in uncovering my uncle’s story, but what was Grandma Mimi’s maiden name?”

  Susan blotted her lips with the linen napkin. “I can’t say I ever knew it or actually cared enough to ask. I never liked my mother-in-law. She had this stony, correction, iron wall around her. Her life was Park Slope. She never left it, never talked about what was outside of it, and never expressed an interest beyond Prospect Park. As far as Gordon and I knew, there was no family to speak of. My wedding was a pitiful affair, one half of the church was practically empty! I suppose her background is just one more mystery surrounding the secretive Martel clan.”

  “Well, maybe the attic at Primrose Cottage can shed some light on those secrets. I was too overwhelmed upon my arrival and chose to wait to go up there. That may be a project I’m ready for this afternoon … after I clean the kitchen top to bottom and arrange for an electrician to come out to upgrade the wiring and circuit breakers. Those little glass fuses kept blowing whenever I plugged in my boom box, so I spent the evening listening to old 78 rpm records.”

  “Oh, I remember those. My parents had tons of them for their RCA. We’ve come so far with these compact discs now.” Susan chuckled. “I bet you’ll find some of our eight track tapes among your father’s belongings.”

  Juliana said nothing in reply, refusing to further engage her mother in any personal discourse, even if it did appear that she started it. She pushed back her chair from the table and began to pack away her things, pausing with one last thought.

  “One last question … do you know how William got his money? His wealth is unprecedented. I mean, Grandpa gave almost all the holdings of DeVries Diamond’s to Dad but what of William’s money? If he left in 1950, his wealth has nothing to do with the family business.”

  “Again, I can’t help you there, Julie, but enjoy it while you have it.” Susan smiled brightly.

  Juliana understood the meaning behind that particular smile of her mother’s. Diamonds had always been Susan’s best friend, but four million in hard currency could easily become her new favorite.

  ~~*~~

  The closed
door to the attic appeared innocuous, but like the pleasant personas and expressions many people conveyed, Juliana felt it was a dead giveaway that something terrible hid behind it. She was, after all, an example of that. Her deepest wounds, she believed, were cleverly masked behind her jovial expressions and happy demeanor, but she didn’t realize that the signs were evident in her near anorexic figure.

  However, on this late afternoon, she felt open and liberated after surviving the luncheon with her mother. She had bared her inner feelings and animosity then came home to clean the vintage kitchen. Feeling renewed, she went to the grocer around the corner because her white Frigidaire looked as hollow as she had felt these last eleven years. Strangely, she was in the mood to cook a cheeseburger.

  From the top of the staircase, Juliana could still hear the record player from the parlor. Melancholy tunes by the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald filled the entire house. She hoped it would carry up into the attic, thinking the soulful music would transport her back to the era and mindset of William when he had last locked the garret.

  Yes, it was locked and after an hour of searching the house high and low, she finally found the key inside a small box in one of the dresser drawers. Beside the brass skeleton key sat a gold signet ring with engraving upon the face: propellers and wings surrounded a small diamond at its center. The inscription along the inside of the band read, “With Love, Mom and Dad.”

  “Here it goes,” Juliana said before holding her breath and nervously turning the key. She felt on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.

  The door creaked like all the others in the house and her heart rate sped up as it had time and again in the course of this home’s unveiling.

  Once the door was fully open, she pulled the slender cord hanging against the wall, illuminating the narrow passage by the bare light bulb fixture.

  Each step up the steep staircase issued a groan from the hardened planks beneath every footfall of her black Converse sneakers until she stood at the top, fiercely gripping onto the simple banister. She looked around the large, dark room before taking the final step into the unknown, mysterious, and yet-to-be-discovered past of her great-uncle. After working herself up to it for the last two days, Juliana had been expecting something ominous and frightening in the attic, yet instead she felt a sense of peace coupled with sadness. Her thoughts traveled to her father, and her emotions became even more pronounced. Her eyes welled with tears at the morose tranquility the attic emanated.

  Essentially, but for a couple of trunks and a few boxes neatly placed upon a shelf, the attic was empty, having lain undisturbed and unfilled since its purchase in December of 1942.

  If these walls could talk, they would tell her how William had slid his footlocker under the eave after placing the last of its contents within and how he had waited one full year before doing so. They would tell his grand-niece how he waited until the very last minute to place the newspaper over the windows. Once beige strips of masking tape were now an aged, burnished orange. The empty space staring back at the modern-day interloper represented the very reason for William’s departure.

  Although expecting the worst in the attic, she wasn’t prepared for the emptiness. She had imagined cobwebs extending from box to box and odd pieces of furniture and tools that had long outgrown their usefulness. She thought the attic would surely be filled with scary dolls and broken strollers, perhaps a rocking chair or an eerie mirror, maybe even some Dorian Gray-type painting and faded photographs. Expecting an antique cemetery of sorts filled with memories, stories, and voices of the past residents who had once lived at 300 Bradford Road, she was surprised by the vacant space before her.

  The startling emptiness of the room confirmed to her that no happy memories had ever been created in this house. The house never became a home, had never filled with children’s laughter or generations of family dating back to its initial construction. No household item ever had the luxury of being used enough to justify its disregard, saving and eventual storing on the third floor. It was clear to Juliana that Primrose Cottage was only a place where William laid his head, not his heart. True life had never infused these walls. The attic led her to believe he had been a bachelor—never married, never had children, never sharing his life, let alone this house, with anyone. The starkness of the attic revealed the loneliness of the man at the time of his departure.

  She walked to one of the windows and carefully removed the yellowed Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper dated from the morning of William’s departure. The last remnants of daylight eerily filled the room as dusk cast a gloomy orange feeling to the already melancholy interior.

  Below the shelf, where a box labeled “Mom’s China” was stored, stood a beautifully carved claw-footed lowboy. It was deep, looking to be a blanket chest, even a hope chest. Beside it, under the eave, sat a green, military footlocker. Scuffed white lettering was stenciled across the metal top and side: LT. W.G MARTEL.

  Juliana went first to the trunk, knelt before it, and carefully lifted the cover with a creak. Taped inside the lid, a collage of black and white snapshots greeted her. There were some of Lizzy, some of an older couple, one of a single older woman and one of a dirty, war-beaten man sitting beside a bombed out ditch wearing a helmet. He held a rifle in one hand and smoked with the other. The soldier looked the spitting image of her father. Carefully, she removed the snapshot, turned it over and read that it was her grandfather, “Lou—Pelileu Bloodbath—Oct. 14, ’44.”

  “Wow, Grandpa. I never knew. You never said anything.” She turned the photograph over again, gazing at his expression. Even in his weariness, he still maintained that twinkle in his eye she knew all too well. “Since you can’t tell me, I’ll find out your story, too. I promise.” Carefully, she placed the slick image beside the footlocker.

  Resisting the hurried temptation to remove the items neatly folded within the trunk, she chose to gingerly pick up the corners to glance at the contents one by one: William’s uniform, his leather bomber jacket, flight manuals, pilot log, and patches that resembled the one on the mantle. Hidden at the very bottom of the military locker, beside an envelope marked “POW” and another containing many more snapshots of Lizzy, was the one thing she hoped to find—a stack of letters. There was no hesitancy in her when she dug her hand deep down to pull them from their resting place of over forty years.

  Tied with a green ribbon, the stack stood at least four inches in height. The well-worn letter secured firmly at the top of the stack and the few below it were without an envelope. Juliana sat back and crossed her legs before the trunk as she faced the striking image of Lizzy tacked within. After untying the ribbon, she recognized the first light-blue, fifty year-old letter’s handwriting from the one burned in the fireplace and in the dim light of the sunset, began to read.

  May 31, 1942

  Dear Lieutenant Martel,

  I hope you will forgive my presumption in sending this letter to you, but it didn’t escape my attention that you failed to ask for my address to correspond. In case it escaped yours, I was hoping you would. Perhaps it was the mud or perhaps something more—something along the lines of your treatment at Meercrest and not by me or my little ole’ Zephyr this past Saturday?

  Please accept my heartfelt apology for the unkind, and dare I say unpatriotic, treatment toward you and Louie not only by my elder sister but also by my parents. Unfortunately, Father makes no bones about his former involvement with the America First Committee and, as you heard, makes no apologies about Lindbergh’s statement that the U.S. military won’t achieve victory in the war against Germany. I believe, when those words were spoken, he truly believed they had armies stronger than our own. Isn’t that correct? While you indicated that Lindbergh’s opinion changed, my father still holds those beliefs. I can offer no excuse for his treatment of you other than the fact that sadly, your noble enlistment and service, represented by your uniforms, only added fuel to his fire. I am impressed by the way you graciously handled my father at dinner with nei
ther condemnation at his inflammatory opinions nor disrespect because someone of his stature in both the Social Register and business held them. Even my mother, in her usual silliness and ignorant parroting of my father’s political views, was met by your courteous understanding during the Bananas Foster. As for my sisters—Ingrid, as I am sure you noticed, is only concerned by her representation in the Gold Coast Social Diary and society pages. Moreover, her expectation of marriage to Johnny and his family’s fortune causes her to be a bit ... caustic, particularly when it comes to his home front contribution. Your kindness and attention toward both Johnny and my sister Kitty touched my heart. Thank you for it all.

  Now, about Gloria—well, she is admittedly a handful and your pilot wings and uniform seemed to enflame her. While I cannot condone her deplorably precocious flirtation with you, I can certainly understand it. In fact, you may well think my letter a forward flirtation in its own right. Lieutenant, you are very handsome and an extremely articulate man. How can I resist when you look so spiffy in your uniform to boot?

  So what do you think of me now? Do you think I’m a scandalous, wacky girl from Long Island for writing you? Are you still angry with the mischievous driver of the Zephyr? Do you believe me indifferent to you because you are not of my social circle? I hope no on all accounts. Your coming to my rescue last evening on both the dance floor and later the dock showed you to be an honorable man and someone whose acquaintance I would like to continue. You are certainly someone I’m grateful to for fighting to keep America from falling under tyranny. I suppose it funny that I should equate that jerk Gebhardt with war, but you saved me from taking matters into my own hand. Muddy trousers would have been the least of his problems. Ha!

  If you wish further association with the hotrodding daughter of a bad-mannered businessman, tipsy mother, and a hoity-toity sister, well then I’ll look forward to a response letter through your brother and my sister.